1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a mobile broadcast system supporting a broadcast service, and more particularly to a method and an apparatus for updating firmware of terminals through a service guide of a mobile broadcast system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The mobile communication market has continuously met requirements for the production of new services through the recombination or unification of existing technologies. With the development of communication and broadcast technologies, current broadcast systems or mobile communication systems provide a broadcast service through a portable terminal (or mobile terminal; hereinafter, referred to simply as “terminal”), such as a mobile phone or a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
In addition to potential and actual market demands, rapidly increasing user demands for multimedia services, enterprisers' strategy to provide a new service such as a broadcast service beyond the existing voice service, and interests of Information Technology (IT) companies that are enhancing mobile communication businesses in response to consumer demands have enabled the convergence between a mobile communication service and the Internet Protocol (IP) to become a big stream in the development of next generation mobile communication technology. This convergence has introduced that application of various services existing in wireless communication or broadcast even into the wire communication market as well as the mobile communication market. Such a convergence has created the same consumption environment for various services regardless of them being wired, wireless, or broadcast.
The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), which is an organization studying standards for interaction between individual mobile solutions, determines the standards for various applications mainly relating to mobile games, Internet services, etc. Within the working groups of the OMA, especially in the Open Mobile Alliance Broadcast (OMA BCAST) working group, technology standards are being studied for providing a broadcast service (BCAST) using a mobile terminal.
In order to receive a broadcast service in a broadcast system, a terminal should receive service guide information including description of the service itself, cost information for the service, and information on a method of receiving the service. That is, the terminal receives the service using the received service guide information of the service.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a mobile broadcast system to which the present invention is applied. More specifically, FIG. 1 illustrates a logical structure between working groups in a BCAST system having established technology standards of an application layer of a mobile broadcast service and sub-layers thereof up to the transport layer in order to provide a mobile broadcast service.
Referring to FIG. 1, a content provider or Content Creation (CC) 101 provides content, which is the basis for the BCAST service. The content may include a file for a typical BCAST, such as data for movie, audio, and video. Further, the CC 101 provides a BCAST Service Application (BSA) 102 with an attribute of the content in order to generate a service guide and determine a transport bearer for the transmission of the service.
The BSA 102 receives data of the BCAST service from the CC 101, and converts the data into a type suitable for media encoding, content protection, interactive service provision, etc. Further, the BSA 102 provides the attribute of the content supplied from the CC 101 to a BCAST Service Distribution/Adaptation (BSDA) 103 and a BCAST Subscription Management (BSM) 104.
The BSDA 103 performs various tasks using the BCAST service data supplied from the BSA 102. These various tasks include file and streaming transmission, service collection, service protection, service guide creation and delivery, and service notification. Further, the BSDA fragment 103 adjusts the service to be suitable for a Broadcast Distribution System (BDS) 112.
The BSM 104 manages, by hardware or software, service regulation including subscription and charge-related functions of a BCAST service user, regulation of information used for the BCAST service, and a terminal receiving the BCAST service.
The terminal 105 receives content and program support information such as service guide and content protection, and provides a user with a broadcast service. The BDS Service Distribution 111 transmits a mobile broadcast service to multiple terminals through inter-communication with the BDS 112 and an interaction network 113.
The BDS 112 transmits a mobile broadcast service through a broadcast channel, such as Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) of the 3rd Generation Project Partnership (3GPP), Broadcast Multicast Service (BCMCS) of 3rd Generation Project Partnership 2 (3GPP2), which is the 3rd generation synchronous mobile communication standard organization, and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB)-Handheld (DVB-H) or Internet Protocol (IP)-based broadcast/communication network of DVB, which is a digital broadcast standard organization. The interaction network 113 provides an interactive channel, an example of which is as a cellular network.
In FIG. 1, BCAST-1 121 is a transmission path for content and a content attribute, and BCAST-2 122 is a transmission path for a content-protected or content-unprotected BCAST service, an attribute of the BCAST service, and a content attribute. BCAST-3 123 is a transmission path for an attribute of a BCAST service, an attribute of content, user preference and subscription information, a user request, and a response to the user request. BCAST-4 124 is a transmission path for a notification Message, an attribute used for a service guide, and a key used for content Protection and service protection.
BCAST-5 125 is a transmission path for security materials, such as a Digital Right Management Right Object (DRM RO) and a key value, which are used for a protected BCAST service, an unprotected BCAST service, a content-protected BCAST service, a content-unprotected BCAST service, a BCAST service attribute, a content attribute, a notification, a service guide, and BCAST service protection, and all data and signals transmitted through the broadcast channel.
In FIG. 1, BCAST-6 126 is a transmission path for security materials, such as a DRM RO and a key value, which are used for a protected BCAST service, an unprotected BCAST service, a content-protected BCAST service, a content-unprotected BCAST service, a BCAST service attribute, a content attribute, a notification, a service guide, and BCAST service protection, and all data and signals transmitted through an interaction channel.
BCAST-7 127 is a transmission path for user preference information transmitted through an interaction channel of control information relating to reception of security materials, such as a DRM RO and a key value, used for service provisioning, subscription information, device management, and BCAST service protection. The BCAST-8 128 is a transmission path in which user data for the BCAST service comes into interaction.
BDS-1 129 is a transmission path for security materials, such as a DRM RO and a key value, used for a protected BCAST service, an unprotected BCAST service, a BCAST service attribute, a content attribute, a notification, a service guide, and BCAST service protection. BDS-2 130 is a transmission path for security materials, such as a DRM RO and a key value, used for service provisioning, subscription information, device management, and BCAST service protection.
X-1 131 is a reference point between the BDS service distribution 111 and the BDS 112. X-2 132 is a reference point between the BDS service distribution 111 and the interaction network 113. X-3 133 is a reference point between the BDS 112 and the terminal 105. X-4 134 is a reference point between the BDS service distribution 111 and the terminal 105 through a broadcast channel. X-5 135 is a reference point between the BDS service distribution 111 and the terminal 105 through an interaction channel. X-6 136 is a reference point between the interaction network 113 and the terminal 105.
FIG. 2 illustrates a configuration of a service guide for receiving a broadcast service to which the present invention is applied. More specifically, the configuration illustrated in FIG. 2 is proposed for providing a broadcast service to terminals by a BCAST system.
Referring to FIG. 2, the service guide data model includes an administrative group 200, a provisioning group 210, a core group 220, and an access group 230. The administrative group 200 provides basic information for enabling a terminal to receive a service guide. That is, the administrative group 200 provides higher configuration information of the entire service guide. The administrative group 200 includes a service guide delivery descriptor fragment 201.
The provisioning group 210 includes purchase and cost information. The provisioning group 210 includes a purchase item fragment 211, a purchase data fragment 212, and a purchase channel fragment 213.
The core group 220 is a core part of the service guide, such as service, content, and schedule. The core group 220 includes a service fragment 221, a schedule fragment 222, and a content fragment 223.
The access group 230 provides access information for access to the service or content and includes an access fragment 231 and a session description fragment 232.
In addition to the four groups described above (200, 210, 220, and 230), the service guide includes a preview data fragment 241 and an interactivity data fragment 251. Each of the configuration units described above is referred to as a fragment, which is the minimum unit of the service guide. That is, one service guide includes fragments, which can be bundled into groups according to their purposes. In FIG. 2, solid lines interconnecting the fragments refer to inter-reference between the fragments.
The service guide delivery descriptor fragment 201 includes delivery session information including a location of a Service Guide Delivery Unit (SGDU) including fragments of the service guide, and information on an entry point for receiving a notification message and grouping information for the SGDU.
The purchase item fragment 211 provides a bundle including service, contents, time, etc., thereby helping the user to subscribe or purchase a corresponding purchase item fragment 211. The purchase data fragment 212 includes detailed information relating to the purchase and subscription, such as price information on a service or service bundle and promotion information. The purchase channel fragment 213 provides access information for subscription or purchase.
The service fragment 221 includes information of service contents, genre, service area, etc., as higher collections of the contents included in the broadcast service around the general service guide. The schedule fragment 222 indicates time information of each of the contents included in the services such as streaming and downloading. The content fragment 223 includes a detailed description of the broadcasted content, a target user group, a service area, and genre.
The access fragment 231 provides access-related information that enables a user to see the service, and provides a delivery method for a corresponding access session, session information, etc. The session description fragment 232 may be included in the access fragment 231 and notifies location information in the form of a URI so that the terminal can identify information of a corresponding session description fragment 232. The session description fragment 232 provides codec information and address information on multimedia contents existing in a corresponding session.
Further, it is possible to provide preview information on the service, schedule, and contents through the preview fragment 241, or to provide an interactive service during broadcast according to the corresponding service, schedule, and contents through the interactive fragment 251.
More detailed information on the service guide may be defined through various element values and attribute values for providing detailed contents and values based on the higher data model illustrated in FIG. 2.
In the BCAST system described above, terminals receiving a service can use the latest software and can more stably and efficiently operate only after updating firmware periodically provided by a manufacturer of the terminals. Therefore, in the BCAST system, OMA Device Management (OMA DM) standards have been defined for use of terminal firmware update standards, which is referred to as “terminal provisioning” Herein.
The exponential increase in the number of mobile terminals has caused a necessity for a standardized method for management of mobile devices, and has thus resulted in requirement for a mobile terminal management method that enables a mobile network provider or service provider to manage firmware or software of terminals while performing wireless communication with the terminals. The OMA DM can manage firmware or software within a mobile terminal by reading, adding, changing, or executing an object of the mobile terminal by using its own a DM protocol standardized by itself.
In general, the OMA DM is designed for use within a terminal of a mobile communication system, and thus enables all communications to be interactive. However, the number of terminal models will be far less compared to the actual number of subscribed terminals. Therefore, a mobile communication system of the OMA DM requires a very large quantity of resources if the firmware update of each terminal is interactively performed one-to-one. Consequently, the OMA DM uses a large quantity of resources to perform updates. Further, in a communication environment having limited radio resources, it is often impossible to perform one-to-one firmware update for the multiple terminals therein.